


The Man With The Shoes

by shamefulshameless



Category: Sense8 (TV)
Genre: A little kalagang in there for good measure, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-13
Updated: 2017-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-13 17:34:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11189994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shamefulshameless/pseuds/shamefulshameless
Summary: "My name is Lito. I'm... I'm a friend of Wolfgang's."Felix couldn't stop his body from betraying him and flinching. "Wolfgang doesn't have friends.""Eh... you'd be surprised."





	The Man With The Shoes

**Author's Note:**

> KEEP FIGHTING FOR SENSE8! Sign the petition and make sure to be following @Global_Cluster for updates on the #BringBackSense8 movement.

 

Lito didn't get stage fright. He never had. When he'd acted in plays as a child, he'd watch the other kids shake and vomit and piss themselves in their sparkly costumes in the hours leading up to a performance. But never Lito Rodriguez, who always played the lead. And then, when he'd grown, it sometimes felt like nothing had changed. (But instead of the main pirate, he played Dr. Ibarra, a passionate yet tortured neurosurgeon with a sense of duty and a mysterious past.) Yet he still never shook. He still was able to ground himself in the moment, look his scene partner right in the eyes, and lie. It's called acting, he reminded himself.

So why was he standing on this gray sidewalk, shaking like a fucking leaf? It was cold, that could be it. That had to be it. He wasn't nervous, he couldn't be. Suddenly a voice rang out behind him.

"I get why you're nervous." Lito whirled around. So much for pretending- if Nomi was here, it pretty much meant he was scared out of his mind. Whenever he felt scared, he seemed to end up at her side. "It's stupid, isn't it?" he replied. He felt his brows furrow. "It's fucking cold, too. I didn't realize how cold it would be."

"Lito," Nomi chided. "Go inside. We all feel the same way about him. You can do this, come on. This is what you do."

Lito shook his head anxiously. "No. No, no, no, it isn't. Lying is what I do. Th- this- this is the opposite of that. I can't say this to the love of my life! How am I supposed to-"

"We don't have time for this. Go." Nomi made sure to keep her voice kind before she vanished.

"Fuck," Lito whispered under his breath. He looked back to the glass storefront that he'd seen a thousand times, but had never seen before, and the familiar bold yellow letters that screamed:

SCHLÜSSELDIENST

FELIX BERNER

He hadn't wanted to go to Berlin to begin with, but straight to London. Then Nomi insisted he was too high profile, and he'd be better off going to Berlin first to recruit Felix once and for all.

He had left Hernando and Dani behind. He couldn't tell them, not yet. It was too hard. And yet here he was, explaining this madness to someone who would view him as a complete stranger. He took another deep inhale, cursed in every language he knew, and stepped inside.

 

* * *

 

 

Felix watched the mentally disabled man on the sidewalk with some interest. On one hand, he felt bad for him. It can't be easy being a pathetic crazy alone in a big city like this. On the other, truer hand, it was pretty funny. Not that Felix had any problem with the mentally unwell, but he took some secret pleasure in seeing handsome men suffer. He used to torture Wolfie about it all the time. "One of these days," he'd declare, "one of these days... you're going to get what's coming to you. I don't like it when you're prettier than me, Wolfie. The universe better punish you for it soon." Wolfgang would, of course, tell him to shut the fuck up. But then again, Wolfgang had always been infuriatingly unaware of the extent of his own good looks.

Felix wrenched his thoughts away from Wolfgang. If he went down that rabbit hole, he'd spend another afternoon driving himself crazy with worry instead of getting any work done. He had a semi-fake business to run, after all.

Nevertheless, his interest drifted back to the man on the sidewalk- a topic safer than Wolfgang and more fun than work. At first, Felix had dismissed him as another poor crazy fucker who'd drawn the short straw in life and was living on the streets, muttering for a living. But upon closer inspection, something seemed off about that conclusion.

Intrigued, Felix assessed him the way he'd assess a mark. When he and Wolfgang were kids, they'd started their careers as pickpockets, and they knew a rich man when they saw one. And this guy? He reeked of money. His haircut looked like it cost more than Felix's rent, and his shoes looked like they cost twice his fucking soul. What was a beautiful, rich, groomed Latino guy doing pacing in front of a shitty Berlin key shop, sweating his moisturizer off and muttering to himself like he'd skipped his medication?

The man stopped and visibly gathered his courage before walking inside. He took a few steps forward and looked directly at Felix without speaking. Felix felt like squirming in his chair, but knew better than to show that kind of weakness to a stranger.

"Can I... help you...? Or are you just going to stand there, because you can't do that for free," Felix shot at him.

The man looked down at his magnificent shoes (goddamn, Felix wanted those shoes) and then up at the Conan poster hanging behind the desk. The sight of it seemed to brighten the man a little. His eyes lit up and his movie star lips seemed to un-smolder themselves. "Yes. I need help with something. It's very important." the man said in perfect German. He had a hint of an accent, from South America or something like that.

"Yeah, sure," Felix replied, "Does that mean you need it rushed? That'll cost extra, depending on what it is you need. A copy or a stuck key or-"

"No, nothing like that," the man interjected. "This won't make any sense. This won't make any fucking sense but I need you to trust me."

Felix's suspicions changed. This could be a hit. He could easily be one of Fuchs', or even a leftover Bogdanow, trying to take him down for good. Felix ran through all the places in the shop he and Wolfgang had hidden weapons. In the second drawer, taped under the chair, in the filing cabinet-

"My name is Lito. I'm... I'm a friend of Wolfgang's."

Felix couldn't stop his body from betraying him and flinching."Wolfgang doesn't have friends."

"Eh... you'd be surprised."

"This is a threat, isn't it? You're with Fuchs."

"No, I'm-"

"Sergei? He still has fucking rats all over the city-"

"Not Sergei, no! I came because you need to know something important about Wolfgang. A few things, really."

Felix's eyes narrowed. "What sort of things? Where is he? If I find out that you hurt him, I will fucking kill you, don't think I won't."

Lito shook his head vehemently. There was something sincere about all this, and something so wrong. He didn't seem to be lying, exactly, but he wasn't telling the whole truth. Either way- this man with the shoes knew something about where Wolfgang was. And Felix intended to find out.

"I know," Lito countered. "Let me explain everything. Please, you have to listen. It won't make any sense, but if you want to understand where he is, you have to believe me."

"So this _is_ a threat," Felix hissed.

Abruptly, Lito's entire demeanor changed. His bowlegged stance and anxious attitude morphed into tight, controlled posture and a face sporting a glower that could kill. "Felix," Lito spoke in his voice, but there was something profoundly different. His next words were slow, blunt, and biting. "You were born in Wuppertal. Your parents names are Leonie and Moritz. They moved here a year after the wall came down to try and start a new life for you. You didn't like it at first so you acted out, and you met Wolfgang Bogdanow in detention at eleven years old. Over the last year, he has been acting strangely. He talks to himself in languages you don't remember him learning. He has been missing for four days. He told you he was considering the India plan again, and that was the last time you saw him. Would you like me to keep going, or have you grasped that there is something going on here that you have yet to understand?"

 

* * *

 

 

Lito had felt Sun losing patience with Felix's suspicions. She'd been standing at his shoulder, urging him to rip the bandage off quickly. But he hadn't expected her to do _that_.

Lito looked at her, standing next to him now that she wasn't commandeering his body. She shrugged. "He is listening now, and he wasn't before."

This wasn't how Lito was hoping this would go- the whole flight to Berlin, he'd practiced his speech in his head. Now he was left to improvise. He felt Sun smirk beside him, and it dawned on him that she had done that on purpose; she knew he was better on his toes.

Felix, wide-eyed, finally spoke in a hushed tone. "Who are you?"

Lito knew from a decade of Wolfgang's memory that this was the voice Felix used when he was trying not to piss himself out of fear- usually he'd use it when he knew they were running out of time on a heist, or when Wolfgang's dad was angry and Felix wouldn't see his friend for a few days. Every time Wolfgang appeared again, Felix would try to hide his relief, and not admit that he'd believed this time was the last straw.

"Please...." Lito found his footing again. "Will you listen to me now?"

Felix nodded.

"Wolfgang is not human in the way that you are. There is another species. Sensate. These kinds of people are born in clusters, all over the world. They become... connected. I'm in Wolfgang's cluster. I live in Mexico City, but I can talk to him whenever I want, I can touch him, see what he sees and feel what he feels. He is another me. Do you follow?"

"....So you _are_ just fucking crazy? That makes me feel a little better. I have to say-"

Lito cut him off again. "No, no I'm not. This is all true. How else could I know all of that about you? I know what he knows. It is how I speak German. Because he does. Just like Wolfgang speaks Spanish, Icelandic, Swahili, Korean, and Hindi."

Felix was silent for a long moment before saying exactly what Lito knew he would say:

"Prove it."

Lito sighed. "Alright. Your phone is about to ring, on the other line will be an American man named Will. He's going to comment on your choice of shirt." Lito nodded at Will, who was standing behind Felix, and Will put his burner phone up to his ear.

Felix's pocket buzzed. He tentatively answered the call. "H-hello?"

"Hi, Felix. I'm Will. Your shirt is really cool, it's the one you got at that new store with Wolfgang about six months ago. You kept making eyes at the girl working the counter, but she told you she had a girlfriend. You told Wolfgang you weren't sure keeping the shirt was worth the reminder of such an embarrassing situation."

Felix threw his phone onto his desk and recoiled like it was a bug that landed on his hand. "What the fuck!"

Will hung up, and nodded at Lito. "I have to go, we're almost ready to go in. Don't forget the plan," he said before turning and disappearing.

Felix took a deep breath. "So let's assume I believe you. That you and Wolfie are psychic aliens or whatever. Will it help me find him?"

"This is why I am here. There are people trying to hunt down people like us. Once they have us, they torture us, lobotomize us, kill us. Or worse. Once they have one, they can track all the others in their cluster and we're all dead. These people... they have Wolfgang in London."

"What?"

"Lila turned him in. She's a sensate, and she wanted to hurt him. So she betrayed him."

"Fucking bitch! I knew she was untrustworthy, I fucking knew it!"

Lito couldn't stop Kala from taking over his body for a fleeting moment. "Thank you! I kept saying that, and no one would listen to me."

She seemed to realize she was in Lito's body, and rushed out to stand at his shoulder. "Sorry," she mumbled. Her eyes were brimming with tears, but her resolve was clearly too strong to let them spill over. "Will you tell him something for me? Tell him that we are going to find him. Tell him that Wolfgang is loved not just by him, and that I won't stop until he is safe. Tell him that Wolfgang isn't alone."

 

* * *

 

 

Felix had been watching Lito stare at an empty spot next to him, nodding, for about fifteen seconds. He was about to speak up when Lito turned back to him. "I have a message for you."

"From Wolfgang?"

"No," Lito said. "From another of our cluster. Kala, she lives in Mumbai."

"There are _girls_? Fuck, okay.... Wait. Mumbai? Like, India? Mumbai, India?"

"Yes."

"Is that why Wolfie wanted to go to India? For this girl?" For as long as he'd known him, Wolfgang had never once been serious about a girl. Not even as a teenager, when he was first starting to discover them. Felix tried to picture what an in-love Wolfgang would even look like, but he came up short. "So are they... together? Why wouldn't he tell me?"

Lito broke into a blinding grin. (Seriously, was this guy a model or something?) "Would you have believed him?" he asked, almost laughing.

"Fuck no! But still. Ah. What's the message from Wolfie's girl?"

"Kala. She wants me to tell you that we're going to find Wolfgang, and that he isn't alone. She wants you to know that Wolfgang is loved."

Felix needed a moment. The last few minutes had been some of the weirdest of his whole life. If this was true- and he still didn't really believe it- then Wolfgang was in more danger than ever before. So on the off chance it was real, why was Felix wasting time?

"Tell her... tell her I'm joining the rescue." He leapt up and grabbed the emergency duffel he'd kept in the closet ever since the shooting. "If there's a one percent chance Wolfie is in danger, I'm not gonna let it stand."

Lito smiled. "She can't wait to meet you. Thank God you're coming, Felix, I was a little worried you'd tell me to fuck off altogether."

"Hey, I still might. This is the most insane thing I've ever heard in my life and... Lito?"

He'd trailed off after Lito had frozen, mouth agape. Suddenly, Lito dropped to the floor, spasming uncontrollably. "Lito?!" Felix went to his knees. He didn't trust ambulances or hospitals, so he'd need to fix this himself. Lito's nose started bleeding like a faucet. Blood burst from his mouth as he heaved, too much blood. The gray cement floor beneath them became splattered with red.

Felix had no idea what to do. His hands found their way to Lito's shoulders, and he realized vaguely that he was shouting, asking Lito if he was okay. What a stupid thing to be shouting at a man with blood coming out of his ears. If Lito died right here, what would his plan be? Before the grim thought could continue, Lito's fit stopped as quickly as it had started. Silence filled the shop for a minute as the two men reeled.

Panting, Lito fixed Felix with a haggard gaze. "Wolfgang," he sputtered out. "That is what they're doing to Wolfgang. We're all... feeling it. It's worse for him. He's fighting hard, but he cannot hold on much longer like this."

"Fuck. Fuck. I'm definitely going with you." He rose to his feet, and stuck a hand out for Lito to take. "Get up."

Lito looked at Felix's hand meaningfully for a long moment before taking it and wobbling back to his feet.

"Felix- thank you. Wolfgang has saved me over and over again. I know it's the same for you."

Felix nodded once. "It is. He's my brother."

"Mine too."

Felix's face split into a wicked smile.

"Then let's go get him."


End file.
